To Be a Friend is Fatal: the Fight to Save the Iraqis America Left Behind

Our Mission

The List Project was founded in June 2007 with the belief that the United States Government has an urgent moral obligation to resettle to safety Iraqis who are imperiled due to their affiliation with America.

Our groundbreaking program of pro bono legal assistance from hundreds of attorneys at top law firms has helped bring over 1,500 Iraqi allies to safety.

Although the war is officially over for the American public, Iraqis who formerly assisted our troops, diplomats, and aid workers are still in grave danger. Our mission continues.

On June 28, 2013, This American Life devoted the hour to the List Project's mission and the story of one Iraqi, "Omar," who pleaded unsuccessfully with U.S. government bureaucracies for help.

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For the American public, the war in Iraq is over, receding quickly from our memory.

But for tens of thousands of Iraqis who have risked their lives in the service of America, it continues at a perilous clip. They continue to receive death threats from militants who view them as traitors. Some have been assassinated since our withdrawal.

Sadly, the current policy of the United States towards these is simple: submit your application and wait. If you can survive for two years (the current amount of time an Iraqi must wait for their first interview to be scheduled), we might consider resettling you.

Even worse, the Afghans who stood beside us for the past decade are now coming up against the unmoving bureaucracy of the U.S. Government, which is only processing a small number of cases each month.

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On September 3, 2013, Scribner published “To Be a Friend is Fatal: the Fight to Save the Iraqis America Left Behind,” Kirk W. Johnson’s memoir about the List Project’s seven-year long struggle to protect thousands of Iraqis on the list. The book centers around the lives of four Iraqis who stepped forward to help the United States, following them as they flee from Iraq and come up against the labyrinthine bureaucracy of the U.S. refugee resettlement program.